How to Fade Music on a PowerPoint

by Ryan Menezes, Demand Media

Music should draw your audience in, not jolt them.

Comstock/Comstock/Getty Images

PowerPoint presentations often use music to enhance slides or transition from one to the next. Yet when the music starts or stops suddenly, it jars the audience, distracting them from your message. You can edit your audio clips using an external application to prevent this, but you can also use PowerPoint's own audio editing tools. These tools will fade clips in and out, blending them more naturally into your presentation. They may also fade one piece into another, if a slide contains multiple audio clips.

Click the up arrow next to "Fade In:" in the ribbon's Editing tab to increase the length of the fade. For example, if you want one second to pass between when the music starts playing and when it reaches its full volume, click the arrow repeatedly until the "Fade In:" box reads 01.00.

Step 4

Click the up arrow next to "Fade Out:" to set the fade-out time. For example, to fade out the last 1.5 seconds of the music, click the arrow until the "Fade Out:" box reads 01.50.

Step 5

Click "Play" in the ribbon's Preview tab to listen to the music with the added fade effects.

About the Author

Ryan Menezes is a professional writer and blogger. He has a Bachelor of Science in journalism from Boston University and has written for the American Civil Liberties Union, the marketing firm InSegment and the project management service Assembla. He is also a member of Mensa and the American Parliamentary Debate Association.

Photo Credits

Have Feedback?

Thank you for providing feedback to our Editorial staff on this article. Please fill in the following information so we can alert the Small Business editorial team about a factual or typographical error in this story. All Fields are required.